New Threads
by MixedBerry
Summary: My take on the events after Parting of the Ways. New Doctor, Rose coping...


AN: I guess, like everyone else, I need to write my take on the new Doctor. It's taken me this long to wrap my head around losing the old one :(

Disclaimer: Of course, I don't own Doctor Who or anything to do with it.

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"Where was I? Oh, yes. Barcelona!"

A grin spread across his face. Rose took a step back. He tilted his head very slightly, questioning, brown eyes looking into hers, the grin still frozen on his face.

"Doctor?" She took a tentative step forward, toward him, confusion and shock visible on her face, one hand stretched out as though she wanted to touch him but thought that he might give her a jolt of electricity.

"Yes, that's me." Another grin. He thought from looking at her that maybe it didn't look quite right. "And you're..." It wasn't a question, it was a statement, but he faltered for the end of it. He searched the girl's face, knew she was important, knew there was something important he was supposed to remember.

"Rose," she supplied. Her expression shifted quickly from shock to anger as she stopped, her hand dropping. "It's Rose."

"I knew that." His legs suddenly felt like they were made of string and he felt consciousness leaking quickly from his mind. As blackness surrounded him and he hit the floor of the TARDIS Control Room it echoed through his synapses, through every cell in his body--the one thing he was focused on at the moment of regeneration, the thing he'd chanted like a mantra in his mind as his cells changed and his body reformed, the thing that he must remember. Rose.

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She was sitting next to him when he woke up, her face set at about one-third worry, two-thirds anger. He felt it pulse through him again, the word. Rose. Like the aftershock of an earthquake. Don't forget. She's called Rose and she's...what?

"Thought you were down for the count there for a minute. Better now?"

He smiled up at her, not his old grin but a small smile. "Much." His voice sounded odd in his own ears, his mouth feeling strange around the words. "Much better." This time it sounded a little better to him, a little more...normal.

"What's with the new accent? You're Scottish all of a sudden?" She still sounded angry, and she folded her arms across her chest.

He sat up, just a little too quickly, and closed his eyes against the wave of dizziness. She put out a hand to steady him, but let it drop instead. "How did I get in here?"

"How'dya think? I dragged you. Odd that. The TARDIS was actually helpful for once, put the medical lab right near the control room. I knew from biology that it takes energy for cells to regenerate, and the scanner display said you just used up lots of it."

"How long was I out?" He dragged his palms over his face as he swung his legs around to the edge of the bed.

"'Bout seven hours. Good thing you don't snore."

He smiled again and reached out to put his hand lightly on hers where it rested on the edge of the bed. "Look, Rose..."

"Ah, you remembered the name. That's something, anyway." She didn't pull her hand away and the sensation of touching his fingers to hers felt comforting, familiar. A flash of memory blasted through his mind, of grabbing her hand and telling her to run for her life.

"It's normal, to have some memory loss right after a regeneration. It'll all come back. Most likely. Almost definitely."

Rose took a deep breath and he marveled at her calm. Humans typically didn't take change too well. But she wasn't your average human. How he knew that, he wasn't sure. Another flash, Rose swinging across some sort of warehouse on a cable. The Nestene Consciousness. She'd saved his life.

"So, you look different, you talk different, you have a different personality and you don't remember everything. In what way are you still even the Doctor?" She said it evenly, but he could hear a hint of panic in her voice. That was strange. Not like him to pick up on the subtle nuances of human emotion.

She looked at him closely, seeming to search his face for some glimmer of something--or someone--she recognized. He opened his mouth to answer, but for once, he wasn't sure what to say.


End file.
